Many Alexa skill builders use AWS Lambda to build the backend for their custom Alexa skills. If you have wondered why Lambda is such as great match for custom skills, let me tell you four benefits of using AWS Lambda.

Today we announced that developers can now programmatically manage and test their skills with the Alexa Skill Management API (SMAPI) and the Alexa Skills Kit Command-line Interface (ASK CLI), new features in the Alexa Skills Kit.

One of the most common questions I get from new Alexa developers is: "I'm getting an error that says, 'The remote endpoint could not be called, or the response it returned was invalid.' How do I fix it?" The good new is you already have all the tools you need.

With the release of the Echo Show, you can complement your voice user experiences with visuals. In this post, we’ll cover scenarios where you want to offer a list of options on Echo Show using one of the list templates.

One of the top drivers of negative feedback on skills is account linking. This is not surprising since it is one of the more complex features to implement. We have attempted to distill the feedback into a set of best practices.

When designing your skill to work on Echo Show, choose one of the available templates based on the interaction pattern you plan to use. Each template maps to a pattern or scenario for an optimal customer experience.

We designed Echo Show so that the screen augments and enhances what skills offer to customers. You can complement your skill interactions with imagery, blocks of text, video, list navigation and selection, touch input, and more.

A visual user interface can be a great complement to a voice-first user experience. In this blog post, we’ll walk you through how to build an Alexa skill using the core developer capabilities of Echo Show.